Kindergarten and first grade students at St. Joseph Catholic School in Chehalis are the first to take part in a new nationwide traffic safety campaign aiming to educate youngsters on how to safely cross streets.
“The Safer Road Initiative” is a free, five-week course featuring 15-minute-a-week classes teaching the Safe Road Adventures K-5 Curriculum through the Pedestrian Safety Institute (PSI), recently created by Mag Instrument, Inc., makers of MAGLITE flashlights.
“We’re excited to be part of this,” St. Joseph Catholic School Principal Keith Frasier told The Chronicle on Thursday, Oct. 22, following a class demonstration with the kindergarteners and first graders. “... It’s perfect timing, because these guys have been practicing before Halloween and are going back through it now with Halloween coming.”
Mag Instrument representative Lou Desmond added that aside from St. Joseph’s in Chehalis, schools across the country are preparing to start The Safer Road Initiative with their students, including in Tennessee, Florida and California.
“And over in the Tri-Cities area, there’s a group of Christian schools that I’m working with,” Desmond said.
PSI was founded over this past summer after it was announced there were over 7,000 pedestrian deaths nationwide in 2025, including “some 700 children,” according to a Mag Instrument news release.
“Upon the request of Tony Maglica, Sr., the 96-year-old founder and inventor of the iconic MAGLITE flashlight, the PSI team went to work and came up with Safe Road Adventures,” the release stated.
Safe Road Adventures teaches children the basics of safely crossing streets using animated characters.
“Learning these critical skills will save children’s lives, and that’s why we are excited about the program. Any time a child is killed or injured, it is devastating for the family, their friends, their school and the community, and we are doing what we can by sponsoring this program of the PSI to reduce the number of these tragic incidents,” Maglica Sr. said in the news release.
On Thursday, Desmond added they are pushing to get The Safer Road Initiative started in as many schools as possible right now with the days getting shorter and more dark hours coming over the winter.
For more information, including accessing The Safer Road Initiative’s entire curriculum, visit https://www.thesaferroad.com/.
